By Scott Diel

At night, from the rocky coast of Prangli Island, you can almost touch the Estonian mainland, the lights of Muuga Harbor gently illuminating warehouse rooftops along the shoreline. But of course it can’t be touched, and for pranglikad, as Prangli residents are known, getting to the mainland isn’t all that easy. For many, watching the Muuga Harbor lights is as close as they will ever get.

Prangli could have been created by a Hollywood set designer: Caribbean-blue water, alternating white-sand and rocky beaches, and fairy-tale forests. But despite its idyllic qualities, it isn’t a place many choose to visit, and getting to Prangli seems as difficult as the pranglikad’s journey to the mainland.

Four times a week, there’s a postal boat which makes a one-hour, return-trip journey from the mainland. But its motor has been broken for several weeks, and so it is moored at Muuga, the denizens of Prangli going without post, fresh bread, and visitors, which the boat sometimes also carries. My wife, Janika, and I would be among the visitors, but since the postal boat is down, we hitch a ride on a fishing boat instead. It is a rusting, rotting 50-footer named Püüton—the Python—from the fleet of the former Kelnase Kolkhoz, built for harvesting kilu, the sardine-like fish which is smoked, canned, and sold all over the Baltic and former Soviet Union. Instead of fish, the captain is hauling a load of elementary schoolchildren for a Prangli excursion, and for slightly under three US dollars each, Janika and I get a come-aboard nod.

Janika has lived most of her 32 years within twenty kilometers of the island but knows it only by reputation. Prangli children, once they reach high school age, are interned on the mainland, and the mention of Prangli to anyone on the Viimsi Peninsula activates the reflex gesture of the forefinger brought to the side of the head and turned like a ratchet. It is said pranglikad suffer from at least several hundred years of inbreeding.

Janika tells the story of the Prangli kid in her class whose Russian language dictation exercises were twice as long as anyone else’s. His resembled a western union telegram: BEGIN DICTATION MOTHER WANTS BREAD COMMA MILK COMMA AND BUTTER PERIOD OR SEMICOLON CAN YOU BRING PAPA SOME NEW SLIPPERS IF YOU FIND THEM TOO QUESTION MARK END DICTATION.

When we arrive in Kelnase Harbor, youths on small-engine motorcycles and packs of mutt dogs surround the dock and inspect the passengers. There are only 120 pranglikad, and it seems many are present to welcome us, although this welcome consists of little more than a stare from a shirtless teenager on a dirt bike. Two drunks stand on the dock amidst the schoolchildren and watch as bags are tossed topside from the hold. Our Siberian husky, Mondo, hops ashore with the last of the kids, and we are told by one of the drunks to keep him on the leash.

“Set him loose,” says the second drunk, staring down the first.
“He must be the mayor,” Janika says in English, amused at their one-upmanship. “Is there a hotel or any place to stay on the island?” Janika asks him in Estonian.
“Could be,” says the mayor, although it is clear he means no harm. His attention is simply focused elsewhere, waiting to see if anything interesting will be unloaded from the Püüton.

The schoolteacher is aware we have no place to stay and invites us to overnight in the rahvamaja, a large lodge, with the children. But we have no sleeping bags or mattresses, so this is out. We learned of the excursion and the possibility to hitch a ride at the last minute—and packed in ten minutes—so we lack quite a few items.

The teacher suggests we follow the class into the village where we might meet someone sober. A young man along as a chaperone offers us smoked kilu from a Styrofoam container which a parent presented the class. We had not had time to eat, either, and are famished. Janika breaks her vegetarian vow and eats the fish, feeding the heads and tails to Mondo.

There are twenty kids in the column ahead of us, none older than eleven or twelve, the youngest not too far out of kindergarten. There is an especially tiny one, dressed head to toe in camouflage, and he stays close by the teacher’s side at the head of the column. Bringing up the rear is the man with the fish and his friend, an affable type in a red Bennetton watchman’s cap, carrying a bedroll and a guitar.
The island is no more than five kilometers at its widest point, and so we don’t have to walk far to find a sober villager. Janika sees him, too, and briefs me concerning strategy.

“You don’t talk,” she says, “until after the price has been agreed.” My accent is thick and might drive the price up significantly. She is right for me to shut up: this particular villager may not be the man with the rooms to let, but he is likely related to him, and word travels fast about newcomers. We’ve seen no evidence of conventional telephone service on the island, but almost everyone carries mobile phones.

“The red house,” the villager points. “Knock on the door.”
Janika doesn’t have to knock, because the man is working in his yard. The garden is freshly plowed, ready for seeding, the grass is cut, the hedges almost sculpted. Firewood is stacked neatly, right angles at every corner. Mondo jumps the stone wall surrounding the house and plays with the man’s puppy.

“Sixty crowns,” says the man. It’s around five dollars for the night.
“Each?” asks Janika.
“Each.”
“Sauna?” Janika asks.
“No,” says the man.
“Breakfast?”
“No.”
“Is it here?” Janika points to a small cottage separate from the main house.
“There,” the man points back down the road. The beds are at the port, a kilometer back down the road we’ve already walked.
“Is there anything cheaper? Something not at the port?” Janika asks. She lived six months in India and acquired an insatiable need to haggle.
“No.” The man holds his ground.
“Is there nothing else?” I suspect Janika wants the offer of hot water from the main house.
“No.” The man repeats himself.
“Well, what should we do?” Janika seems to be addressing me, but quickly turns to the man. “There surely must be something else. Maybe a turismitalu?” She’s talking about a tourist farm, a sort of minimalist dude ranch for Estonian city slickers who’ve never seen a goat.

“One-fifty,” says the man, confirming its presence.
“Total?” This would be ten dollars.
“Each.”
“Well what should we do…” Janika starts this again, and I’m unsure of my part. I was told to shut up, but now she seems to be talking to me. I’m confused about strategy, but I stick to the original plan. Janika tells the man we’ll take the rooms at the port. He says he’ll run get the keys. It’s his longest sentence yet.

When the man goes inside, I tell Janika I’d rather stay at the dude ranch than the port with its oil stench and flea-bit dogs. She thought I would resist the ten dollars—I am, admittedly, sometimes cheap—and so took the port rooms. She happily chases after the man to tell him.

We get directions to the talu and find the owners also working in their garden. It, too, is as immaculate as a suburban Atlanta lawn, albeit more useful with its apple trees, gooseberry bushes, and large vegetable garden. My instructions again are to shut up, this time until money changes hands. We haven’t heard the price from the horse’s mouth yet, and although the man with the port rooms phoned ahead in our presence, it’s possible he called them back later to alert them to a foreigner.

To make certain I don’t ruin things, I stay outside the farmhouse while Janika goes inside to handle the business. I toss a stick for Mondo and turn around to find a woman staring me in the face. She’s about my mother’s age but lacks my mom’s friendly demeanor.
“Who are you?” she demands.
I’m doubly confused now. I have to say something. I’m not thinking fast enough.
“We heard this was a turismitalu,” I say. “My wife is inside with the hostess.”

There is silence. She looks me over, frowns at Mondo. She says nothing, turns and walks away.
Inside, Janika is explaining how 150 crowns each will cause great suffering. Before they went into the house, the hostess mentioned that a sauna would not be possible. In this country, on an island or not, ten dollars for a bed is outrageous without a sauna. Janika returns and reports she got her down to 270 crowns for the whole affair. “And I probably let her off easy,” she adds. And she probably did, but I feel guilty about haggling over two dollars with a woman who probably needs the money.

The guesthouse is 400 meters from the main house and is separated by two fields, a hedgerow and a stone fence right out of Ireland. Given our reception here, I think of Frost’s “Mending Wall,” not the part taught in American classrooms as a civilized aphorism, but the poem’s general nastiness and possible allusions to neighbor killing.

The guesthouse is a simple wooden farmhouse with an eternit roof—a fabricated shingle on which moss grows. It is probably close to a hundred years old, not at all considered old. The house’s main door opens to a wood-floored sunroom with four chairs and a round table flanked by a particleboard china cabinet. A can of Cobra-brand insect killer and a Mennen Speedstick share a shelf with teacups and saucers.

I take a seat to contemplate its meaning and am startled by a man outside the door. “Electricity,” he says loud enough to be heard through the windows, and he throws a switch on the outside of the house. I remark to Janika about the islanders’ economy of words. “Yes,” she says, and I don’t know if this is a joke. I revert to my assignment, silence.

We make a meal of võileib, cold, open-faced sandwiches. We have butter, cheese, tomatoes, avocados, and for me, pasteet, an Eastern European sort of paté, which to my palate is far better than its western counterpart. Mondo is treated to a jumbo can of Chappi, a Finnish dog food with an angry German Shepherd on the label.

It is almost June, and the Baltic sun will not set until after eleven, and so evening seems endless. After dinner, we decide to explore the island and look for a beach. Perhaps I will meet a few locals and talk to them, now that the room is paid for and I am free to talk.
We encounter three teenagers on the road through the village, and Janika tries out her island-speak on them.

“Where’s the beach?”
The kids point in three different directions. We are on an island, after all.
“This way?” Janika points the direction the road goes. “What’s there?”
“A church,” the tallest one answers.
“And a beach?”
“Yes,” he says.
“A sand beach?” Janika is careful to ask one question at a time.
“Yes.”
“How far?”

This stumps them. They look at each other.
“In kilometers, for example,” Janika offers.
They are somehow communicating between themselves without speaking, making a variety of faces indicating they have no idea how far a kilometer is.
“One? Two?” Janika gives them a choice.
“Yes,” says the tall one.
We give up and walk on.

I’ve always found, with out exception, that for every nasty, frozen Estonian I encounter, I soon meet another who shows great generosity and warmth. Once, traveling with my close friends Jerry and Christopher, we ran out of gas in unpopulated southern Estonia. We asked a farmer for some, but he coldly told us to push our car to the nearest filling station and wait. We did. Two hours later, when we were about to lose faith and open a bottle, the owners arrived. While Jerry filled up his car, I asked the owners about the river behind the station. Did it hold trout? It did, they said, and you’re not from around here, are you? Jerry came over to pay them, and we must have charmed them with our heavy accents. We were invited into the station’s back room, where they produced a bottle of vodka.

Christopher, who lived in Latvia and spoke no Estonian except for jäätis (ice cream), made up names for each of the two owners—Father Nick and Horatio—and gave us running commentary in English while we drank. We finished their bottle, produced our own, and were invited to Father Nick’s house for dinner. We followed him in his van.

In the time it took for us to pry ourselves out of Jerry’s tiny Russian car, Nick had lined up his family to greet us like heads of state. We shook everyone’s hand and were ushered to an A-frame hunting lodge. Father Nick’s wife served smoked moose and ham while Nick and Horatio told the story of shooting a boar between two of their gas pumps. Three bottles later, we left. Jerry was so drunk that he picked up a hitchhiker and made her drive. The hitchhiker was an attractive young woman who had had a fight with her husband and was going to town to spend the night with her sister. As if to put the cherry on the jäätis of friendliness, she invited Jerry to meet later for a drink.

But on Prangli, there is no such friendliness. When we walk toward the church on the far end of the island, people scowl from their windows and raise mobile telephones to their ears. Dogs scamper out from behind stone fences and growl at Mondo. It is as if the entire island has turned its back on us. I recall something I’d read, its source long forgotten, which would serve perfectly as the Prangli motto: We do not know you. What is more, we do not wish to be known by you.

The next morning, while Janika sleeps, I draw water from the deep garden well and make coffee in a pot that whistles like a winter storm. I drink coffee in the sunroom, warming my shoulders and the back of my neck. I read from Across the River and into the Trees, and the Colonel and Contessa sipping Valpolicella at the Gritti make my coffee taste even better. Mondo sleeps on his back, four paws in the air, in a patch of thick green grass. There are no sounds, save for the sea breeze in the treetops and the occasional hum of a motorcycle on the village road. It is a perfect morning for doing nothing but drinking coffee.

The village store opens at ten, and when we arrive for our provisioning, there is already a collection of locals waiting outside. They are three young men in their early twenties, one of them standing in filthy black jeans, a baby-blue windbreaker, and camouflage cap. The other two sit in fold-down cinema chairs, a row of which has been ripped from a theatre and deposited in front of the store. The three share two cigarettes.

“A line already?” Janika asks the one walking around. I have developed a habit of not talking.
“Heh!” he says. Not a word in any language I know.
“Are you from Prangli,” she asks.
“Heh!” he says again. We take this to be an answer in the affirmative.
“What do you do here?” Janika presses.
“We kill time with beer and vodka,” he smiles, exhaling smoke and passing the cigarette back to his friend. “There aren’t even any women on this island.” Relatively speaking, we have met a gifted orator.
“Why don’t you leave then?” Janika asks.
“Soon I’ll have to,” he says.
“Hah,” shouts a passerby. “What idiot would let you out?”
“Where you going?” the orator asks. The passerby is walking with great purpose.
“The port.”
“Why?”
“A meeting.”
“What meeting?” It is good to see that the orator also has trouble extracting information.
“There’s a ship offshore which wants to mine sand. I’m not sure if I’m going to permit it.”

The passerby continues on his way and the orator explains that the ship needs the permission of the island’s government to take sand.
“Is he on the council?” Janika asks.
“He’s a drunk,” answers the orator.

Inside, the store is slightly less Soviet than the outside due to its offering of western goods. There is a variety of canned goods, condiments, a large supply of plastic fly swatters, a selection of galoshes, one pair of men’s shoes (blue running shoes, size 42), and two loaves of bread. Bread comes on the postal boat, and word is the boat will soon be fixed. And there is lots of alcohol. Behind the counter, to prevent theft, there are six shelves full of mostly vodka, flavored schnapps, and a few off-brand whiskies.

We are alone in the store, and through the window, covered with a typical faded green Soviet image of a milk pitcher, tea kettle, and drinking glasses, I can see the locals still sharing cigarettes and trading insults. Marching up the path, led by Mondo, is a parade of the twenty schoolchildren we’d sailed with aboard the Püüton. Right into the store they come, Mondo leading the way.

“No dogs in the store!” shouts the woman behind the counter. “They pee on everything.”
“He’s not a local,” Janika says calmly. “He won’t pee on anything.”
The woman turns back to a customer, apparently satisfied. Mondo and the twenty children mill around examining chocolate and chewing gum.

After we stock up for lunch—they have enough goods to make potato salad—we walk back down the church road in search of a proper sand beach. We don’t have to walk far to find a couple of boys on motorcycles. It seems motorcycles are the principal form of entertainment on the island. In the daytime, the island vaguely resembles New England’s Block Island with its feint, ever-present hum of mopeds, replaced here by the more urgent whining of two-stroke dirt bikes. The bikers ride from the east end to the west end and back again. In case a Prangli denizen ever finds himself disoriented, the east and west ends of the island are conveniently labeled with expensive metal highway signs provided by the state. Idaots reads one. Lääneots reads the other. Eastern tip and western tip, respectively.
These boys are merely sitting on their motorcycles—perhaps to save gas—and it is easy to approach them.

“Is there a nice sand beach near here?” Janika asks. Again, I am quiet. I am invisible.
“No,” answers one.
“Anywhere?” Janika simplifies her question.
There is a period of silence, perhaps thought. “Near the church,” one concedes. We’ve been to the church and seen nothing but marsh and rock.

“Nothing closer?” Janika is more experienced now and isn’t easily fooled.
“No.”
“Nothing through those trees?”
“Well, yes.”
“Can we get there through the forest?”
“No.”
“What about a road? Does a road go there?”
“No.”
“What about that road on the left. Does it curve around to the beach?”
“Yes,” one says. “The road on the left.”

The beach’s beauty is staggering: water so clear you can see the bottom four meters down, cloud white sand with no seaweed, boulders the size of whales. We are in the island’s lee, and there is no wind, just the sun’s warmth. I try to swim, but the ice melted only a month ago. It’s too cold to even wade, so I settle for washing my feet.

Janika makes potato salad, adding canned tuna to mine, and we snack on rabbit’s cabbage we’ve picked along the narrow lanes outside the village. It has a sour taste, is often used for salad, and is found only in the spring. I prefer it raw, snapped fresh from the ground.
I remark to Janika that despite its raw beauty, Prangli does not seem destined to become a tourist mecca. I tell her that I do not wish to make a premature judgment about the pranglikad, but that statistically, with a population of only 120, I suspect that our sample size is sufficient to reach a scientific conclusion.

“Did you come here to meet people?” she asks.
“No,” I say. But on this island that could mean anything.
“No,” she smiles. “I understand.”